High-Performance Building

Your Smart Buildings Aren't That Smart

Our ancestors managed for millennia without air conditioning, electric light, and the other appurtenances of modern life. So should the profession’s efforts to go green necessarily involve more technology? The recipient of a $129 million government research grant explains his ideas for making buildings more energy-efficient. (Hint: Technology is only part of the solution.) A consortium proposes a counterintuitive strategy for New Orleans’ flooding problems. And a professor suggests that architects need to design, and build, more simply. Read on to learn more.